Monthly Archives: July, 2015

Weil der Stadt is located near Stuttgart. Johannes Kepler was born in this very veautiful town on December 27, 1571 and his memory is still there: this big statue is in the middle of the Market Square…

Photography by Carlos Dorce

… and Copernicus, Mästlin, Tycho Brahe and Jobst Bürgi are with him in this monumental sculpture.

Photography by Carlos Dorce

The four scientists are in the corners of the base of the statue and the words “Astronomia”, “Optica”, “Mathematica” and “Physica” are graved on each of the four sides.

Photography by Carlos Dorce

I must say that here we have the first (imaginary) bust of Bürgi that I know. Bürgi was one of the originators of the logarithms because Kepler said that he had seen Bürgi using logarithms in astronomical calculus (Rudolphine Tables (1627)) before their “official” first occurrence in Napier’s Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (1614). Furthermore, Bürgi published his logarithms in his Aritmetische und Geometrische Progreß tabulen (1620) but his “red numbers” and “black numbers” couldn’t never win the “logarithms” which were the first calculator in all history.

Photography by Carlos Dorce

Notice that this statue is not very similar to this other portrait from 1620:

J.Bürgi at the age of 67. Drawing by Aegidius Sadeler (1619)

The base of the statue also have four graved images representing moments in Kepler’s life like thispicture with Kepler in the middle explaining the Copernican system…

Photography by Carlos Dorce

… with Hipparchus and Ptolemy watching how a central Sun brights in the middle of the universe.

Can you imagine Kepler investigating about his elliptical orbits?

Photography by Carlos Dorce

Next to Market Square there is his bithplace which hosts… no, no, no! Tomowwor will be another day!

This beautiful doodle was published by google in the Persian and Arabic countries last 10th June because in 10th June 940 the great Abû al-Wafâ’ al-Buzjanî was born in Persia. Since 959, he worked in the Caliph’s court in Baghdad among other distinguished mathematicians and scientists who remained in the city after Sharâf al-Dawlâh became the new caliph in 983. He continued to support mathematics and astronomy and built a new observatory in the gardens of his palace in Baghdad (June 988) which included a quadrant over 6 metres long and a sextant of 18 metres.

Abû al-Wafâ’ wrote commentaries on works of Euclid, Ptolemy, Diophantus and al-Khwârizmî, and his works were very important in the developement of Trigonometry and Astronomy.